


the universe is a punk ass bitch (but you're here, too, so it can't be that bad)

by ohmymaple71



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Falling In Love, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Kinda, M/M, Military Background, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Pet Names, Pre-Canon, i dont think idr when i wrote this, im not descriptive dw, theyre stupid and gay ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 02:34:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmymaple71/pseuds/ohmymaple71
Summary: " At the very least, they can have this. Can have each other, still here, not quite whole but still here, and nobody can take that away from them. Not if they can do anything about it. "Alternatively: for two dudes who talk about existence a lot, they sure like to say fuck you to the universe a lot





	the universe is a punk ass bitch (but you're here, too, so it can't be that bad)

The Universe, in all of its mystery and endless glory, really isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

It really, really isn’t. 

I mean, look at all the shit it’s done, all the shit it has to do, and all the shit you don’t want it to do but it does anyway- the Universe, in and of itself, is just a bag of dicks. It doesn’t know what it’s doing, and if it does it likes to do it sloppily, and frankly? Honestly and truly?

It’s shitty.

That being said, sometimes, on a rare occasion, it does something that kind of makes sense. One of those things where it’s not really clear right away, but like… it’s obvious when given enough time, even if that amount of time is a few odd years and lots of fighting.

Sure, it seems like a bad thing at first, but soon it becomes a good thing. Soon it makes sense, and you get to the answer and the answer is something you wanted, or something you didn’t want, or for a real kick in the balls it’s something you thought you didn’t want but turns out you really did all along, haha, tricked you!

In this case, the Universe gave one Dexter Grif one Richard Simmons, and gave one Richard Simmons one Dexter Grif, and with no instruction manual at all, because who needs it, the Universe left them to figure shit out on their own. Like a bag of dicks. 

It really just is like that sometimes.

\---

The first time Simmons meets Grif, they’re eighty feet in the air and he thinks he’s going to fucking die here, with his heart beating too fast and his eyesight going a little blurry and this stupid fat fuck telling him he’s overreacting.

Grif, on the other hand, doesn’t see what’s got the other guy so bothered. It’s just basic, he signed up for it, why is he crying about it? But Grif is polite. He was raised to be polite, raised his sister the same way, and so he sits down next to the guy and goes: 

“Hey. Dexter Grif. We just gonna hang out here?”

And the guy, who he later learns is named Richard Simmons, goes:

“Oh god, I’m going to die and the last person I’ll ever talk to is named fucking Dexter.”

They stay up there for two hours, give or take, and really Grif doesn’t think it was too bad. They got shot at, sure, but it wasn’t the worst place to make a new friend, and by the time Simmons started to breathe normally he’s actually pretty good at this whole conversation thing, and so when their feet hit the ground and just before they get royally chewed out by their C.O, he grabs the guy by the arm and gives him a nudge.

“Come get a beer with me later,” He says, and while he didn’t come here to make friends he figures it can’t be that bad to know at least one guy in this place and Simmons is quiet for a second too long, pulls away abruptly when their superior gets there and almost trembles when they’re yelled at.

\---

Later on, after the night has been given over to the soldiers, he looks for a familiar shape among the endless sea of red armoured guys and even though Simmons really doesn’t drink, he takes the beer handed to him.

“I know a good spot,” He says and when Grif raises an eyebrow he flushes and stammers, and Grif laughs it off, and calls him a dumbass but says “Lead the way.”

Simmons decides in that moment that maybe, despite his doubts, this might have been a good idea.

\----

The first time they’re assigned to units, they’re assigned to different units. Grif heads to some Northern-Buttfuck-Nowhere colony and Simmons gets assigned to some shitty, tiny little place he’s never heard of before, and it doesn’t bother him.

They’re just bunkmates, after all, and Simmons has wanted to throttle Grif for the entire two years they’ve been in this hellhole, and he knows that Grif has wanted to murder him for the entire time and it’s not like he’ll miss him, or anything.

They’re just two guys who got stuck together, and argued together, and lived in close quarters unhappily for the entire time and now, just when they’d come to some kind of happy peace between Grif’s lack of caring and Simmons’ overcaring it’s getting changed, and they’re going to be stuck with some other strangers from other hellholes just like this in some place that doesn’t fucking make the map, and it’s not that Simmons is stressing it’s just that he doesn’t do well with new people and-

And Grif is giving him a look. They have their helmets on because it’s a mandatory briefing, and that’s what the rulebook says and their CO right now is a stickler for rules, but Simmons can feel it. He knows exactly how the other man’s eyebrow will be quirking up and when he makes his way across the room, all casual and meandering to bump shoulders with him and go:

“Dipshit. Hey. Meeting’s over, stop being fucking weird and come get food,”

And then he’s following lead, and Grif’s already pulled his helmet off and is bitching and Simmons is quipping back with the same tone they’d become accustomed to after all this time, that’s when Simmons realizes that, yeah. Ok. 

Maybe he will miss Grif, just a little bit.  
\----

The last week before they ship out isn’t abnormal. It doesn’t mark any significant change in either of them, doesn’t make Grif magically better at cleaning up after himself, or make Simmons less likely to have a breakdown at even the slightest amount of stress, but somehow it’s memorable. 

Somehow, it’s something they could talk about years later and agree that yeah, Davids definitely set the fire alarms off on purpose, or that no, no way it was Albertsen that kept telling those shitty jokes, that was her specialty not fucking Andersen. Somehow, that one week that really should have only defined their final, thank-fucking-god, get-me-out-of-here separation was the week they could talk about the most, out of the many weeks they’d spent stuck together.

(104.3, Simmons would say, because he rounded up. 104.28, Grif would say, because rounding was for fucking nerds, but he had passed math pretty easily so fuck you.)

And then there they were. The two of them. Shoulder to shoulder (or as much as they could be, considering Grif was like a pumpkin ahd grown legs while Simmons resembled a beanpole with human features), backs to the wall at looking at the tiny fucking room they’d survived in for the past two years.

Clean, thanks to Simmons, but unfamiliar without the lived-in clutter Grif had always had.

And it was quiet. It had never been quiet, because neither of them had ever really known how to shut up and even when they were sleeping it wasn’t quiet because Grif moved and Simmons was a light sleeper so it meant he’d be whisper-yelling at Grif and Grif would be sleep-yelling back and-

“So this is it.” Grif said.

“Sure is.” Simmons said.

“...Kind of weird,” And Grif had turned to look over at his… friend? No. Bunkmate? Not anymore. Fellow poor fucker about to go and get himself killed in some distant corner of the universe? Yep.

Simmons just nodded, because yeah. It was kind of weird, but like anything else if they didn’t acknowledge it they didn’t need to focus on it and that meant they could ignore it. He did not want to acknowledge how weird this was.

“Kind of.” He said instead, when it was clear neither of them was going to move past it if one of them didn’t just suck it up. “So... “

“So…”

And then they stood there some more. And Simmons felt uncomfortable, and Grif felt a little nostalgic, and then the P.A system announced that it was time to leave and they went to leave, because that was what they did.

They were soldiers, and soldiers didn’t make friends when they were never going to see each other again, especially because they hated each other and they definitely were not even the least bit nervous that this was, arguably, the rest of their life.

\----

At the landing zone, barely five minutes before take-off, Grif had been waiting for the rest of the assholes he was sharing a drop ship with, weight resting against one of the god knows how many obnoxious, heavy and unlabelled crates that were always around when his ear twitched.

The was weird.

It twitched again, and Grif frowned beneath his helmet, casting an annoyed look in the direction he was hearing it and for a moment, the briefest of breaths, he paused because he was definitely seeing things. And then he blinked, and Simmons, lanky and with his helmet under his arm and red in his face stopped in front of him, hair messy from the backwinds of the jets and grinned at him.

Stuck his hand out.

“Stay alive, fatass,” He’d said, and Grif had grinned in return, met eyes with the sentimental idiot in return and grabbed the offered hand, pulling the other in for a hug instead of a handshake because who shook hands anymore.

“You too, dumbass.”

\----

The first time Grif found himself alone, it was cold and it was dark and he knew it was, like,  
every horror cliche he’d ever read about but it was real. And he was alone.  
No, not alone. Isolated. He was isolated because if he was alone he would be fine, because he’d been alone and he’s survived. It’s just that isolation was- isolation was different. People got punished for war crimes with isolation, not by being alone and Grif was-

Grif was isolated.

And six months was a long, long time to spend isolated. 

\----

Simmons, for all his bitching and complaining and pretending, didn’t really mind the post he’d been given.

He didn’t like it, sure, but when had that ever mattered? He didn’t get to choose based on what he wanted or didn’t want, and that was something he was more than used to by this point.

But sometimes? Sometimes Simmons fucking hated it. Like now. Like when he was being called for the thirteenth time that night because somebody didn’t know how to rewire something and he’d shown them fuck knows how many times already, and why was he even being called for this he wasn’t a fucking engineer, and-

And Simmons was frustrated. 

This wasn’t- he knew he was smart but he didn’t understand why that meant suddenly, impossibly, everything rested on his shoulders, and his shoulders alone and nobody else got pulled off their fucking patrol for a lamp and if he cried, so what?

He cried when he was frustrated. It frustrated him more. He rewired a lamp, angrily and when his C.O called on him again, brought up one more thing that he was expected to do that anyone else could have done, he lost it.

And then Simmons panicked, and walked around for the rest of the night because how the fuck was he supposed to make up for that, and then what if he was considered AWOL, he wasn’t AWOL but

But then Jiang found him, and stood there and for five minutes he stared at Jiang and Jiang stared at him and then they were just… tense. Nobody expected him to do things anymore, but they also didn’t talk to him. It was… strangely lonely, actually. Made his frustration grow.

Six months later, when quarters came in, Simmons was told of his transferral through a post-it stuck to his door. 

He didn’t say goodbye.

\----

The first day Blood Gulch began, Grif looked at Simmons and Simmons looked at Grif and, silently, quickly, they decided they were not going to talk about it. They weren’t barely-made soldiers in basic and they definitely weren’t going to try and, like, talk. Who talked anymore?

Not to mention, the team was a mess. Grif was there and Simmons was there and then their C.O was there and across the canyon, the entire reason they were there apparently, was this other team and that other team looked so much more functional than they did and the heat.

The heat was, arguably, worse than the company. And that was saying something because the company was the fucking worst and while Grif and Simmons had decided not to talk, because who fucking talked anymore, they had nothing against bickering.

About the heat. About their patrol schedules. About Sarge. About Grif’s habits and about how Simmons nagged him. 

About anything, about everything, the mundane and the extreme and at some point that clicked, that stuck. The method of ignoring the unspoken, of pushing it down under layers and layers and layers of near-hate and petty disputes and stupid names. That was what they were, and it made for a damn good routine, really, if you ignored how unhealthy it was.

Made it easier at least, than saying something dumb. Something like: “I missed you.” or “I’m glad you survived.” or “There’s nobody else in the galaxy I’d rather be stuck in a goddamn box canyon with than you, dumbass.” 

Made it easier to ignore the fact that there was something else there, after a while. That something had sprouted its way through the concrete of their total hatred, pushed through the layer of shaky friendship they’d had before.

\---

Shit happens. Shit always happens, it’s just the way it is, but shit happens and then they’re left to pick up the pieces in whatever downtime they can scavenge. In the quiet moments, between shit going wrong and shit going horribly, and at some point they began to seek solace in each other, to ground themselves with one another.

Simmons finds that, sometimes, all he has to do to make his mind shut up, to make his thoughts stop racing and numbers stop flashing behind his left eye, all he has to is spot Grif. Not Grif in armour (until they have to wear their armour all the time, in case something goes tits up again), but Grif just… existing. Alive. 

He lets his eyes stick to him, take in the curve and soft edges of his teammate, his enemy, his constant annoyance and his best friend, watch how his breath slows during a nap or when he says he’s napping but Grif is really just laying there. Grif just lays there a lot. Simmons doesn’t know how he didn’t notice this beforehand. 

Grif, on the other hand, has begun to focus on himself to ground himself. Focus on how his fingers tap a rhythm on the barrel of his gun, how his neck pops when he stretches it, lets himself savour the rare moments where he can get away without wearing a helmet. Take the soldier off, for even just a second, just be Grif, again. Just Dexter. 

He misses his fucking sister. 

And then he’s Grif again, the soldier, the orange one, another Red Team soldier stuck in this Blue battle, and sometimes it gets to be too much, and even Grif can’t ignore that he feels like breaking down, and when that happens he finds himself near Simmons. Watching, for a moment, considering the way those narrow fingers (piano hands, his mother would have said, but she fucking left, too, like everyone else has) run over paper, or through thick red curls.

Those are the times Grif sits himself down beside Simmons, the maroon one, the tall nerd, lanky and stupid and such a pain in the ass, but his best friend-- his only friend all the same. Sits himself down, and knocks their shoulders together, or tangles their ankles. Takes solace in the fact that Simmons is here and he’s real and they don’t talk about it, not really.

Once, he tangled their hands. 

 

They never talk about that, either, but if they’re honest they really want to.

\---

Chorus. The Freelancers. Felix and Locus.

Everything happens so fast, takes so much. 

Grif is pretty sure he should be dead by now, is definitely sure he didn’t sign up for this shit when he got drafted into the army. Can’t deny the whole being a hero thing isn’t cool, but can’t help but feel like this is wrong. Like any second now, it’ll all fall apart.

Like he’ll wake up, and he’ll be alone again. Isolated.

That’s when he seeks Simmons out, silent in his civvies for once and Simmons looks up and opens his fucking mouth again, but nothing comes out like he expected it to.

“Grif?” He asks, and his voice is still nerdy and geeky and nasally, still annoying. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, and Grif sits down beside him, leans into his friend. Shakes his head, but doesn’t say a word and then it clicks for Simmons, the concern in his voice leaving for a softer tone and his arms are around Grif, now. A hug. Easy. Simple.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Simmons asks, just like clockwork and he doesn’t even wait for the shake of Grif’s head (also like clockwork, because this is how they always do it) before he goes back to reading his book.

\---

They stay there until they fall asleep, warm against warm and the book forgotten on the floor. 

Donut drapes a blanket over them, and Simmons nuzzles his face closer into the crook of Grif’s neck. They can’t panic when they’re unconscious, can’t worry about what this could mean until the morning dawns. 

At the very least, they can have this. Can have each other, still here, not quite whole but still here, and nobody can take that away from them. Not if they can do anything about it.

 

\----

The first time, when the tension first breaks, it’s quick and it’s messy and it’s rough, all teeth and curses and symphonies of heat. Marks left in skin and promises whispered among filthy, wrecked words. Grif has Simmons against the wall, pressing him back because he’s taller, yes, but they’re nearly even if he has those long legs wrapped around him and those piano hands gripping his curls. It’s Grif who supports them, but it’s Simmons who guides them, hot breath and face as red as his hair, teeth digging into Grif’s neck again and again and tugging on that dark hair and by the time they’re both out of breath neither of them knows what to say.

It’s been a long time coming, they both know that. Everyone else knows that. Grif and Simmons. Simmons and Grif. It’s something inevitable, something that had been assured by some kind of universal presence and only now has come true and neither of them have the words to put to it.

What can be said? What is there to say, standing there on shaking legs, with too warm faces and skin buzzing with how close they still are, with the fact that they haven’t separated and even if he thinks really hard, Simmons doesn’t know where he ends and where Grif begins anymore, and then, just like that, the silence breaks.

Simmons laughs.

Grif blinks.

Their setting returns to them, the room they’re bunked together in and the faintest sounds of outside, and Simmons can’t stop laughing, and Grif doesn’t quite know what to make of that. So he slides his hands from the ginger’s waist to his wrists and tugs and suddenly he’s laughing too as they tumble onto a bunk, all half-shed clothing and comfortable, easy limbs and in some way, some strange way, he feels like he understands the universe.

\---

Later on, when they wake up, Simmons bitches about how gross it is, how sticky they are and he only shuts up when he trips trying to get himself untangled from his undersuit and Grif, and he has a revelation.

There, on the floor of this shitty regulation room, all dried sweat and chilly skin and messy hair, Simmons watches Grif laugh again and feels his heart flutter. He wonders why he put this off for so long, and thinks maybe galaxies could be found in the way Grif’s laughter sounds to him.

But Simmons has never been one to wonder out loud so he frowns and pulls himself back up, and he hesitates only a little bit before he leans down to kiss Grif again, to muffle that beautifully familiar laughter for a moment.

“Showers, starshine.” He says, and Grif pretends like he didn’t feel his chest flutter at the name, even as he tangles his fingers with Simmons’ and lets his teammate, his best friend, his reason tug him up.

And, for the scarcest of moments, the flow and light trapped within the ever-expanding universe comes together. In swirls and ribbons of feeling and thought and emotion and neither of them question their reason for being, because Simmons has Grif and Grif has Simmons, and that’s as much of a reason as they need.

**Author's Note:**

> hey fellas its 3am and i dont actually remember when i wrote this but it was probably like a year ago, i found it in my google drive trying to upload a vine compilation bc thats just how life be
> 
> i rlly love grimmons and verging on waxing poetic abt them and the universe, its an issue


End file.
